Vungle Targets Brands With Its New Exchange For In-App Video Ads

Vungle announced today that it’s launching what it calls “the first ever advertising exchange built exclusively for in-app video.”

When the company announced its $17 million Series B in February, CEO Zain Jaffer said that the exchange would allow Vungle to expand beyond app trailers to run video ads for big brands, too. He reiterated that point this week when discussing the exchange, saying that brand advertisers had avoided mobile video for five main reasons: ad quality, latency, brand safety, standards, and optimization.

The exchange, which will allow mobile publishers to run ads from multiple ad networks and ad buyers, addresses each of those issues, Jaffer argued. On ad quality, Vungle will only serve high-resolution videos of 15 seconds or fewer. On latency, the company says it serves the ads “in less time than it takes the human eye to blink.” To address brand safety, the exchange will give advertisers control over where their ads can run, and it has also been built to support new video standards and formats that emerge. Lastly, the company says its algorithms can optimize the mix between app install ads and brand ads.

Jaffer added that the Vungle video ad network will be one of the ad buyers on the exchange, but its ads won’t be prioritized — they’ll be judged using the same algorithms.

“The combination allows us to essentially ensure the publisher always makes a ton of money,” he said.

The Vungle Exchange is available as part of the company’s new software development kit. There will be new video formats launched on the exchange over the next year, the company said. And yes, it will be specifically focused on in-app ads, not ads on the mobile web.

“I just want the world to know that we believe apps could be as big as the web if not bigger,” Jaffer said.